Wednesday, 26 October 2011

10 Valuable Tips for NGOs on Twitter

Twitter is fundamentally changing the way people, companies and organizations interact and share ideas. With that said, and especially in the case of NGOs, it is very important to learn how to utilize Twitter in order to achieve the goals and objectives they are trying to promote.
Therefore, for today’s post, I will be sharing with you 10 useful and equally valuable tips for NGOs on Twitter:1. Monitor Discussions & Relevant Updates:
Once you’ve signed up and chosen the right Twitter name,avatar and background for your NGO, start out by doing a search. This will familiarize you with the relevant content on Twitter and will give you a taste on how to proceed further.2. Identify & Follow:
Identify the most influential and interesting Twitter users in your sector and follow them. You can also look up your friends and colleagues since they might help you get more exposure for the cause you are promoting. Tweepi.com is a great tool for doing that!

3. Customize Your Account:
Add a descriptive bio, a related link and customize your page to encourage tweeps to follow you. There’s just enough room for a short description in your Twitter bio so use it; explain what you’re doing or, if you’re representing an organization or campaign, and describe your activities.4. Create a Relevant Voice:
Perhaps you want to inspire debate by asking pertinent, open-ended questions or maybe you want to inform about issues. It’s up to you which tone of voice you use but avoid going into rants or being idle.5. Patience, Grasshopper:
There are many services out there that promise huge number of followers, forget about them; what you really want is quality not quantity. Having 50,000 people who aren’t listening to you or retweeting you is not as valuable as 100 advocates who will evangelize your cause.
The way to do this right is by being active through posting relevant and interesting messages and responding and engaging with followers.6. Engage Your Audience:
Twitter is flooded with millions of tweets per day, make sure that yours count. If you post interesting stuff, people will want to talk to you about it. Twitter is two-way communication so don’t be surprised when people want to talk to you or ask questions.7. Revisit Your Tweets:
Sometimes you might get so caught up in your tweeting that you will forget to check up on the quality of your tweets. Therefore, every once in a while, you need to check your profile page to can see all the tweets you’ve posted and get an idea of just how funny, interesting or informative you have been. You may be surprised but you can assess, adjust and improve accordingly.8. Use a Twitter Client:

The easier you make it for yourself, the more likely you will post messages more often. There are tons of Twitter clients out there which can make it easier for you to follow up on and organize your tweets.9. Be Creative & Innovative:
As an NGO, the chances are that your followers are actually interested in what you have to say; they really want to hear from you, especially if they are potential donors or volunteers. However, although it’s quite common to post the latest blog article or retweet an interesting titbit, you still need to add more value to your followers by being creative in your tweets and the information you share.10. Checkout HashTags:
You’ll often see words like #earthday #apprentice and so on, these are knowns as hashtags which you can include in your tweets to make it easier for others to follow that topic.